Wu vs. Whipple: Will money continue to dominate, or can comeback kid do it again? | Opinion
Did you ever notice how when there’s a problem with schools, or public transit, or homelessness or mental health, wealthy people solemnly proclaim: “You can’t solve problems by throwing money at them.”
But then when they have a problem, they throw money at it. And it almost always works.
Which brings us to the primary election results in the race for Wichita mayor.
As of election-night returns, the two candidates who will face off in the November general election are Lily Wu and incumbent Mayor Brandon Whipple. The results aren’t final yet, but it will be nearly impossible for the third-place finisher, council member Bryan Frye, to overcome a 398-vote deficit with only provisional and late-arriving mail ballots to be counted.
If you didn’t start the year with “Lily Wu will come in first in the primary for Wichita mayor” on your 2023 bingo card, you’re not alone.
It wasn’t until February that Wu, a reporter for KWCH television, resigned from her job and hinted that she was exploring a run for mayor.
She quickly emerged as the favored candidate of the developer/CEO class that had grown accustomed to pulling the strings at City Hall, but have more recently seen some of their most beloved projects fall by the wayside, like the billion-dollar-plus Riverfront Legacy Master Plan and privatization of the city’s golf system.
On Tuesday morning, even as the voters were voting, the council overturned a Planning Commission decision that would have allowed a developer to tear down 15 homes near Wesley Medical Center to build doctors’ offices. I can’t imagine that happening five years or so ago.
Developers and businesses still get most of what they ask for — every week’s council agenda brings a new set of tax breaks or subsidies for some business or other.
But things have changed a bit since the the not-so-long-ago days when it was an article of faith that developers and business owners asked for things and the council would deliver — and thank them for asking.
These past couple of years, questions have been raised and if there’s one thing the executive class of Wichita doesn’t like, it’s having to answer questions. (Ask me how I know.)
They had a problem, so they threw money at it.
As of two weeks ago, they’d thrown more than a quarter of a million dollars behind Wu’s candidacy.
Who knows what they’ve done since, because a near-daily blitz of Wu mailers and phone-bank calls only intensified over the weekend.
One of Wu’s biggest supporters — at $66,000 worth — is Americans for Prosperity, a Washington-based political front group for Koch Industries and its chairman and CEO, Charles Koch, ranked by Forbes Magazine as the 17th richest person in the world.
In a recent debate, Wu said “Am I proud to be supported by a pro-freedom organization? Absolutely.” It was a weird flex for a candidate who promotes herself as “the outsider,” but necessary to keep Koch support.
The guy I feel for here is Frye. If you’d asked me in January, I’d have said with some confidence that the race would probably come down to him versus Whipple.
For years, Frye has cultivated both the button-down business class and hardcore conservative voters.
If you sent a request to central casting for a “pro-business Wichita mayor type,” they’d send you Bryan Frye. His day job is working for the Kansas Chamber of Commerce.
As for the ultra-conservatives? Frye was the one who — during a council meeting — bought pizza for an angry mob that showed up at Century II for a seven-hour public hearing and protest demonstration over the city’s mask mandate during the COVID pandemic.
But in the end, the moneyed people of Wichita mostly went with Wu, footloose and baggage-free. The Wichita Chamber issued a lame dual endorsement of Wu and Frye. But everybody knew what they meant.
Whipple has raised far less money than Wu and there’s no way he’ll be able to come close to matching her spending in the coming months.
However, it’s worth noting that he has been the comeback kid before.
In 2019, incumbent mayor Jeff Longwell was the vote leader coming out of the primary and his funding eclipsed Whipple’s — and set the record until Wu came along.
Last time around, unions came up big for Whipple.
In the coming months, expect Whipple to try to turn this race into a contest between the people who build business jets in Wichita and the people who buy them.
It will be interesting to see if he can.
